Exploring the underinvestigated area of instruction during study abroad, this article offers a quantitative study of linguistic development among second language university learners of Chinese during a semester in China. A comparison is made between learners following task-based language teaching and a comparison group following a traditional…

This study investigated the relationship of a set of word-combination-based measures of phraseological diversity, sophistication, and complexity to second language (L2) Chinese proficiency and writing quality in comparison to that of a set of large-grained topic-comment-unit-based measures. Our dataset consisted of 101 assessed narratives produced…

We investigated the role of cue weighting, second language (L2) proficiency, and L2 daily exposure in L2 learning of suprasegmentals different from the first language (L1), using eye-tracking. Spanish monolinguals, English-Spanish learners, and Mandarin--Spanish learners saw a paroxytone and an oxytone verb (e.g., "FIRma-firMÓ"…

This study examined structural priming during online second language (L2) comprehension. In two self-paced reading experiments, 64 intermediate to advanced Chinese learners of English as a foreign language read coordinated noun phrases where the conjuncts had either the same structure or different structures. Experiment 1 showed that the second…

This study longitudinally examined the effects of cognitive and sociopsychological individual differences (aptitude, motivation, personality) and the quantity and quality of second language (L2) experience on L2 speech gains in naturalistic settings. We elicited L2 spontaneous speech from 50 Chinese learners of English at the beginning and the end…

This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment exploring whether the figurativeness of collocations affects L2 processing of collocations. The participants were 40 English native speakers and 44 Chinese-speaking English foreign language learners (including doctoral, postgraduate, and undergraduate students). To ensure that the effect…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

This study examined the sensitivity of Chinese-English bilinguals to derivational word structure in English. In the first experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects for prime-target pairs related both transparently (e.g., "hunter-HUNT") and opaquely (e.g., "corner-CORN") but not for those related purely in…

Definite expressions may be used to introduce a referent into discourse when their familiarity between speaker and listener can be inferred, a strategy known as bridging. However, for a number of reasons, bridging may be difficult to acquire compared to the acquisition of indefinite introductions for noninferable referent types, with the native…

A common predictor of language gains during study abroad (SA) is amount of language use. Yet little attention has been given to determining what factors influence the extent of language use while abroad. Studies in this area have mainly been case studies of learners in single locations. In this larger study, we seek to determine variables…

The current study employed a neuro-imaging technique, Event-Related Potentials (ERP), to investigate real-time processing of sentences containing filler-gap dependencies by late-learning speakers of English as a second language (L2) with a Chinese native language background. An individual differences approach was also taken to examine the role of…

Researching the longitudinal development of second language (L2) learners is essential to understanding influences on their success. This 7-year study of oral skills in adult immigrant learners of English as a second language evaluated comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness in first-language (L1) Mandarin and Slavic language speakers. The…

With Chinese native-speaker data as the baseline, this study investigates the use of the morphosyntactic particle DE by learners of Chinese as a second language. The general patterns are as follows: (a) DE tends to be deleted more in informal speech than in formal settings; (b) higher proficiency and longer residence in China--more interactions…

Relations between various measures of attitudes toward self, the native language group, the target language group, reasons for learning ESL, reasons for traveling to the U.S. and attained proficiency in ESL were investigated. Attitudes toward self and the native language group were positively correlated with attained proficiency in ESL. (CHK)

A study of 220 communication strategies used by 12 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners indicated that the frequency, type, and effectiveness of strategies employed by learners varied according to their proficiency level and the language distance between the learners' native and second languages. (28 references) (Author/CB)